Bound for the Outer Banks Read Online Free PDF Page B

big corporation. She got claustrophobic just thinking about it.
     
    Ella knew she was more than likely the only girl complaining about the Sadie Hawkins Dance. The other students, feeling stifled by attending an all girls’ school, were thrilled to be attending a function where the girl was given the go ahead to be so forward as to ask a guy out. This was simply not done in the South, at least not the circles in which Saint Stanislaus girls traveled.
     
    Ella had finally gotten up the nerve to allow Shelby to act as the go between and send the invitation to Jack Murphy by word of mouth through Shelby’s date who also attended St. Patrick’s. Ella was consumed with relief when Jack responded through the gamut of messengers that he'd love to go.
     
    The car lurched forward snapping Ella out of her daydream. Jack Murphy and Saint Stanislaus seemed liked eons ago. So much water had passed under the bridge since then, not clear, calm water either, but a lot of black water, dark and murky that might contain disease causing fecal matter. Yeah, that about summed it up because wading through a lot of crap would pretty much describe Ella’s past decade in a nutshell.
     
    As the Charger pulled out of the Atlanta airport and onto Interstate 85 North, Ella once more decided the arrangement to send her to Roanoke Island was a complete coincidence. Besides, she had always been curious about where her mother’s folks were from. After a few miles, the driver took the ramp onto Interstate 20 East. A few exits later Ella saw the sign for Zoo Atlanta. She wished she was headed for a carefree day at the zoo instead of running from Dante Vitali’s United Sacred Crown crime organization. The agency would only fly Ella to and from major airports deciding a pretty, single girl exiting a plane at a small airport would bring unwanted attention and questions. Also, instate agents were not allowed to take her to her destination. The proximity was too close and should they get curious it would be too convenient for them to seek her out.
     
    Every town Ella had been hidden in had been pedestrian friendly. She was always given a bicycle on which to get around because contrary to popular belief, the agencies did not have unlimited budgets to support an individual, waiting for sometimes years, to testify in a high profile case.
     
    After balling up her lime green Lilly Pulitzer cardigan, which Ella kept with her at all times to combat frigid airplanes and airports, she placed it on top of Old Finnegan. She laid down her head and tried to rest because it would be a nine hour drive to The Outer Banks of North Carolina.

Chapter 5

    The nine hour trip to Roanoke Island demanded at least two stops according to Special Agent Jefferson. He did not ask Ella for any input on where they would stop. Three hours into the trip he pulled off Interstate 20 at a Columbia, South Carolina exit and pulled into a Waffle House parking lot. Ella was always embarrassed when she had to exit out of the back seat of The Bureau cars that transported her to her next home but she did it without protest.
     
    When Ella had just returned to the states on a grueling eleven hour flight, after a stop at the embassy to rat out Dante, she asked why the agent was making her ride in the back since she wasn’t a criminal. “It’s just the rule, ma’am,” he said with an especially pronounced Southern accent. Ella had wondered if somehow her late mother had intervened from the afterlife and sent a Southern gentleman to retrieve her from the airport after one of the most emotionally trying times of her life. Ella smiled at the round faced agent and dutifully hopped into the backseat and she’d never questioned it since.
     
    Once she arrived she was given a stipend of cash each month that she picked up at the local post office under the assumed name Belle Butler. What a ridiculous name, she’d think to herself. Of course she figured the spirit of Blythe Barrantine had been working